The Games I’ve Made (So Far)

I was recently asked for a list of the games I have worked on over the years. That question sent me down a bit of a rabbit hole. I realised I don’t actually have a single list anywhere. Some of the games still exist online, some are tucked away on old hard drives, and some have quietly disappeared into the depths of the internet.

Still, looking back, there have been quite a lot of them.

The Early Days: DarkBASIC and Blitz3D

I started out making games in the early 2000s. My first tools were DarkBASIC and later Blitz3D, both of which were fantastic for hobbyist developers. They made it possible to jump straight into building 3D games without needing a huge engine or complicated setup.

During that period I worked on several projects, but the following stand out in particular.

Rocket Boards

Rocket Boards was a fully 3D racing game built with Blitz3D. It was inspired by games like Mario Kart, although instead of karts the racers rode hoverboards. The idea was simple: fast arcade racing on futuristic tracks with a cast of quirky riders.

The game featured 8 playable racers, and 16 different tracks. Apart from the music, I created everything for the game myself. That meant the programming,3D art, track design, and general game design.

One of the most exciting moments for me was having Rocket Boards published in physical stores by a budget games publisher. Walking into a shop and seeing a game you made sitting on a shelf is a pretty surreal experience.

Limit Rush

Around the same time I created a large tutorial series based around a game I made called Limit Rush. This project used DarkBASIC and was designed both as a playable game and as a teaching tool.

Limit Rush was a 3D capture-the-flag style arena game. You piloted a hovercraft around a futuristic arena while competing against computer-controlled opponents. The goal was to reach the targets scattered around the map before the other racers.

The tutorial walked through how the game was built step by step, covering things like movement, enemy behaviour (AI), and basic game systems. It ended up becoming a fairly substantial learning resource for people getting started with DarkBASIC.

Bubble Blitz

I also tried my hand at a colour matching puzzle game called Bubble Blitz. This was based on a game called Bubble Bomb, which I published after the original developer had to stop making games.

The Miniclip Years

After my early indie experiments I joined Miniclip.com as their third employee. At the time they were focused entirely on browser games using Flash and Shockwave, 2 plugins that no-longer exist.

I originally joined as a game artist, but over time my role evolved and I eventually became the Director of Web Development overseeing the design and development of the website.

During my eleven years at Miniclip I worked on a lot of games. I honestly couldn’t give you a precise number, but it was probably somewhere between twenty and thirty projects. Most of these were smaller casual games built in Flash, which was the dominant platform for browser games at the time.

Below are (very small) screenshots of some of the games I worked on whilst at Miniclip. Unfortunately the games are no-longer available online, but you can see some of the art and design work I did for them.

I wrote a little more about them in a previous post about what I do at work.

Indie Games

While working at Miniclip I continued making my own games in my spare time.

Some of these were released as shareware puzzle games, which I sold online. This was during the era when independent developers could sell downloadable PC games directly from their websites.

I also entered a game design competition hosted by JayIsGames with a physics-based puzzle game called Roll (you can play the original Flash game online using the wonderful ruffle javascript library). Competitions like that were always a lot of fun because they encouraged experimentation and unusual ideas.

Eventually I shifted away from Flash and moved toward HTML5 game development, particularly using the Phaser framework. Phaser made it possible to build browser games using modern JavaScript, which suited me perfectly.

During this time I created several small games. These were built for the LowRezJam Games Jam, which challenged developers to create games with a resolution of 64x64 pixels or less. Working under those kinds of constraints is surprisingly liberating. You stop worrying about building a huge project and instead focus on making something small and fun.

Legend of Dad

A small adventure game about a dad (me) on a quest to find milk for his child.

Pixel Peak

A time challenge skiing game inspired by classic arcade games like SkiFree.

Star Raid

An exploration game where you hunt for coins on an abandoned mining facility.

Brush Ninja

After leaving Miniclip I created Brush Ninja, which is a browser-based tool for making animated GIFs.

Originally it started as a small experiment, but over time it grew into a full website. Today it hosts a range of creative tools as well as some of my browser games (including Splatter Balls).

The main goal behind Brush Ninja is simple: encourage creativity, particularly among younger users. The internet has a lot of passive entertainment, but I’ve always preferred tools that let people create things themselves.

BeepMini

More recently I have been working on my own open source retro game engine called BeepMini.

BeepMini is designed to make it easy to create small retro-style games in the browser. It has built-in graphics, sound tools, and a tile-based system that makes it quick to prototype ideas.

Alongside the engine I’ve also been creating a small collection of games built with it. For these projects I’ve gone fully old-school and handled everything myself: programming, art, music, and sound effects. BeepMini is designed to make this easy, including built-in art and algorithmic music generation tools.

It’s been a really enjoyable way to experiment with game ideas without needing huge projects.

Whilst working on BeepMini I have also been creating a game making platform for building retro adventure games. This is still in the early stages but you can see the adventure game maker on the BeepMini website. The current version was used to build Key Kwest.

Splatter Balls

One of my more recent projects is Splatter Balls, a physics-based pachinko-style game.

This game actually started life many years ago as a small experiment. Recently I picked it back up again with the goal to finish it off properly.

This time I have a collaborator: my 10 year old son. He has been helping design new levels and even provided the sound effects for the game. It has been great fun working on a project together, and seeing the kinds of ideas he comes up with.